Construction of a Sweet Life

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

AMERICAN & EUROPEAN PASTRY

September 18, 2013

This week's focus is petit four sec a/k/a cookies. Today we made Hazelnut Biscotti, Coconut Macaroons, and Checkerboard Cookies.

Biscotti is baked twice. After the dough is mixed, it was molded into to a roll and baked the first time.

After baking, it was cut into slices.

As seen below the center is not quite dry and requires a second bake to complete.

After the second baking the centers were dried out.

To finish them off, one end was dipped in dark chocolate. If made again, I would definitely cut the hazelnuts into small pieces prior to mixing in the dough.

Hazelnut Biscotti

For the Coconut Macaroons, most of the ingredients needed to be heated on the stove first to 130 degrees and then the extracts and zest added before dropping the batter on a sheet pan to bake.

Once the batter was on the pan, an indent was pressed in the center of the batter and filled with pineapple. The macaroons were then baked in the oven for about 20 minutes.

After baking, the macaroons were a nice golden brown.

Coconut Pineapple Macaroons

Some were drizzled with chocolate and others were dipped in chocolate. The ones that were dipped in chocolate almost tasted just like a mounds bar.

Coconut Pineapple Macaroons Dipped in Chocolate

The Checkerboard Cookies took a little bit of time and work. First the dough is made, one with chocolate and one without. One was placed on top of the other.

Then the dough was cut in half and place on top of each other again.

Next the dough was sliced lengthwise in strips.

Each strip was then layered on top of one another alternating the colors.

Once the strips were layered, it was then wrapped in a thin layer of chocolate, the excess cut off and then refrigerated.

As an alternate, the same dough was used to make a Pinwheel Cookie. The process began the same way with placing one dough on top of the other.

Then the dough was simply rolled up and refrigerated.

Once the dough had been refrigerated long enough, the dough was then be sliced and had a nice clean cut.

The sliced dough was then rolled in sugar and baked. For the amount of work and time required for these cookies I thought that they would be the best tasting cookies ever but I found them to be just another cookie.

Checkerboard Cookie

Pinwheel Cookie

Thursday, September 12, 2013

AMERICAN & EUROPEAN PASTRY

September 12, 2013

Today we focused mainly on pie dough. We made mini apple pies, apple tarts, mini banana cream pies and blueberry cobbler.

For the apple pie, we created a flaky pie dough (made with hazelnut size chunks of butter). We rolled out the dough.

We then cut the dough with a cutter and placed it into a small mold.

A basic apple pie filling was made with cinnamon, sugar, vanilla, lemon and flour.

The pies were filled with the apple filling and either topped with a struesel or lattice pie dough.

For the lattice top, we cut the dough with a fluted pastry cutter.

We created the lattice and then flipped it over on to the pies after brushing with an egg wash.

The apple pies turn out beautiful with a nice golden color.

Mini Apple Pie

For the banana cream pies, the dough was required to be blind baked (baked without a filling). We cut the dough and placed in molds and then place another mold inside it and turned upside down to bake.

Half way through the baking process, the shells are turned over and the inside mold is removed and the shells are put back in the oven to complete browning and baking.

After baking was completed and the shells were cooled, they were filled with pastry cream and layer of bananas.

The bananas were then covered with more pastry cream.

The cream was then topped with a Creme Chantilly.

The pie was then finished with chocolate shavings and powdered sugar.

Mini Banana Cream Pie

For the apple tart, we used left over sweet dough from yesterday to create the crust. The dough was placed in a ring mold, a layer of pastry cream was added and then apples were arranged on top.

Once the apples were fanned out, the tart was baked.

Even though Banana Cream Pie is one of my favorite pies, the Apple Tart was my favorite dessert made today.

We also made a blueberry cobbler. Cobblers are generally made with leftover fruits, but we made this cobbler with frozen blueberries.

It was really quick to mix up and put together and top with stuessel but the baking took over an hour to complete. We did not get a chance to taste the cobbler or take home due to the baking time frame.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

AMERICAN & EUROPEAN PASTRY

September 11, 2013

This week is pies and tarts. We were all required to make a sweet dough using the creaming method by hand. When I say by hand, I mean literally creaming with your hands. That was interesting, messy and tiring on the arm. I now know that if doing this, the powdered sugar should be sifted to make it easier to incorporated. I would recommend and prefer to use a mixer of some sort but in a pinch without a mixer I know it can be done this way.

The agenda today was making Key Lime Tarts, Frangipane Tarts with Poached Pears, and Fruit Tarts. After mixing the sweet dough and let it set in the refrigerator for a bit, we rolled out the dough.

We then used different methods to make the tart shells. One method was placing the rolled out dough on top of individual tart molds and pressed down with hand and then a rolling pin to cut the dough.

After the dough was cut the dough was lightly pressed into the mold.

A second method used was cut the dough with a cutter and then placing the dough on the outside of a sprayed pan.

The third method used was placing the dough over a tray mold and lightly pressing the dough into the mold.

Then the excess dough was cut away from the mold.

All methods resulted in a nice baked tart shell.

While the tart shells were baking and cooling, we made the fillings for the tarts. The fruit tarts were lined with chocolate, filled with pastry cream, then top with fresh fruit and a clear glaze.

Fruit Tarts

The key lime tarts were lined with white chocolate, filled with a key lime filling and topped with Creme Chantilly and then torched top.

Key Lime Tarts

For the frangipane tarts, we created the frangipane to fill the tarts which is an almond paste mixture. We had poached pears in a red wine liquid. For the pears, we started by peeling the pears and coring the bottoms.

We created the poaching liquid from a red wine zinfandel and added sugar, vanilla bean, black pepper and orange zest and then added the pears.

The pears were then covered with a parchment paper to capture steam (not with a lid which would capture too much steam and over cook the pears).

The pears simmered for about 25 minutes on the stove and came out with a nice red coloring on them.

The poached pears were cut into thin slices and placed on top of the frangipane filled tart and covered with a clear glaze.

Frangipane Poached Pear Tart

I had never had poached pears before and they were really quite good on there own and even better with the frangipane tart.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

AMERICAN & EUROPEAN PASTRY

September 5, 2013

Today we all made a butter pound cake formula. Each team was tasked with making a different flavor and then mixing it in a different method to see how the end result turns out if not mixed in the method of the formula.

My team did a white chocolate raspberry pound cake. We added melted white chocolate to the batter and did an all ingredient in at once mixing method. After mixed, we poured half the batter into the pans. We then took about 1 cup of the batter and mixed it with raspberry jam and dropped this into the batter in the pans and swirled through it. After baking, we made a glaze for on top of the cake. The glaze my teammate decided to make did not look a appealing and was a bit too liquidity to work. The chef had us make an alternate topping out of pouring fondant and then drizzle the original glaze on top.

The concept sounded great but the end result was not a good one. It looked sloppy, the inside mixture was a pale plum color, and the taste was not good. Chalk this one up to experience of what not to do when making a marble pound cake.

Other teams made a orange vanilla, lemon vanilla, banana vanilla, vanilla with chocolate topping, and a dark chocolate and vanilla pound cake. The dark chocolate and vanilla cake was the best and tasted wonderful.